Life change is inevitable. It's how you show up that matters.

Ova 1

On the other side of the door, the phlebotomist asked a couple of questions.

“Christine, what is your birthdate?”

“1/5/75.”

“And, what was the blood work ordered for?”

“Mmm, Ova 1?”

(whispers) “Oh, cancer.”

“Yeah.”

It’s at that point, the point of watching your blood fill up a vile, get labeled and placed on the tray with other questioning viles…at the point of hearing that results will arrive in about a week and half while pressing down on the cotton swab, the point you’re scooted off since the waiting room is brimming over with lab slipped patients…it’s at that point that life is out of your hands. Or, better yet, control.

So, what do you do?

You get in the car. You do your work. You engage and smile. You continue to make plans for dinner. You are present.

Somehow, though, present is harder to be.

Many women have growths on their ovaries. I’ve heard about five in the last two days. There are very good chances that the pain I’ve felt for a number of years is the result of the small mass that’s decided to lodge onto me, that with a short out-patient procedure, they can heal me, that my quality of life will be all the better for it, that my dimming chances of having a baby will improve.

Until then, blood work has been done to show tumor indicators. Negative and we move forward with the plan above. Positive and other measures will need to be taken.

I want to be optimistic. I want to see this as a good thing. But, the mind goes dark sometimes, and I feel scared. Still, there’s nothing to do but wait. So, I can choose to wring my hands…get dark, or I can relish each day I am able to go on a morning run, or work on a design project, or be with loved ones or lie in savasana and watch the clouds roll by.

Because there are no guarantees here. There never were. I am just really aware of this now.